


save the bees

by purgay



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cas and Bees, Exterminator!Dean, First Kiss, Fluff, Human AU, M/M, Matchmaker Charlie, Snarky Castiel, beekeeper!Cas
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-23
Updated: 2015-05-23
Packaged: 2018-03-31 21:36:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3993703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purgay/pseuds/purgay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He notices it tucked beneath the windshield wiper on his Impala. It’s a small, blue flier with a cartoon bee sitting on a pink flower with “Save the Bees” in a puffy font that resembles clouds. Dean stares at it for about about three solid minutes before crumpling it up and shoving it in his pocket. </p><p>The one where Dean is in the business of killing bugs and Cas is in the business of farming them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	save the bees

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little fluffy piece I wanted to do. I wish I had the time or patience to flesh this out more. It's not fully edited yet, so all mistakes are my own.

Dean hates bugs.

He’s not entirely sure what it is about them. It could possibly be all their little legs, creepy and crawly, tickling against his skin as they make their way up his arm. It could also be that most are so tiny that they can find their way into places they don’t have any business being (seriously, he saw a video of a botfly larvae in someone’s ear and that shit it just sick). However, it probably just all boils down to the fact that it’s his job to kill them. He’s a Winchester, it’s practically coded in his DNA.

Dean hates bugs and bees are no exception; especially the one currently buzzing around his head. In fact, this particular bee is number one on his hit list. He swats at it with one hand and gives Charlie, who is watching with a cheshire grin, her receipt to sign with the other.  

“I can tack on getting rid of these things too, you know,” he makes another failed attempt at knocking the bee away and practically pouts when it buzzes off to circle around some pretty pink flowers in the window sill of the florist's shop.

“Dude, no, termites are one thing, bees are another. They actually help my business.”  She scribbles her name, which looks suspiciously more like Bilbo Baggins than Charlie Bradbury, and jerks her head towards the pot of white hawthorns. “These bees help pollinate the flowers. They practically work here.”

Dean’s frown turns into a scowl.  He tugs the clipboard out of her hand a little harder than necessary but the corners of his lips quirk up in a smile when he sees the name. “Whatever you say, Mr. Baggins.”

She gives him a playful shove on the shoulder and turns on her heel, pushing open the door to the small flower shop. “Chinese take-out and Star Wars tonight?”

“I dunno, why don’t you ask your bee friends? They might get jealous,” he teases. Thursday night movie marathons were kinda their thing, he wouldn’t miss it for the world. She gives him an exasperated eye roll and ducks back into her shop, flipping him off from behind the safety of the glass door.

Dean still has a goofy grin on his face when the buzzing returns.

The bee flies in a circle around his head and with all the skill of someone who played baseball for like a week in high school, he takes his clipboard and swings and misses.

He’s luckier on the fourth try, successfully whacking the bee a couple feet in front of him.

“Gotcha’,” Dean whispers, smiling triumphantly. If he really wanted to be an ass he would tack on a penny to Charlie’s bill for exterminating the bee. She probably wouldn’t think it was very funny but Bobby would get a kick out of it later.

“Why did you do that?” An unfamiliar voice booms from his left, practically giving Dean a heart-attack.

He is completely prepared for a snarky remark but it dies on his tongue the moment he turns his head. The guy is gorgeous, which might actually be an understatement. He’s clean cut, with mussed dark hair and skin that shines golden in the warm spring sun. His eyes are squinted small, but even then Dean can see they are blue. Very blue. They are also boring a hole into Dean’s head and now his heart is beating quickly for an entirely different reason.

This guy looks like he’s about to deck him.

“Hey, uh, what?” Dean tries to register what the guy even said to him before his brain turns to mush.

“That bee,” the guy inclines his head and Dean follows his gaze to the small body of the dead bee, “why did you kill it?”

Dean’s brows practically reach his hairline because oh god, it’s another Charlie.

“It was attacking me,” he says pointedly and the dude actually scoffs.

“You provoked it.”

Dean’s mouth drops open in disbelief and handsome-but-kind-of-asshole guy gives him an incredulous glare.

“I did not, it’s a freaking bee,” he growls out, “it’s not like I killed a dog.”

It’s the other guy’s turn to gape in disbelief. It was like Dean just told him the moon was really made of cheese or the president was a lizard man. His jaw snaps closed and he seems to gather his bearings because next thing Dean knows, he groveling past him, making sure to knock shoulders with Dean extra hard.

Dean watches the guy leave, still unsure of just what exactly happened, and definitely doesn’t notice that his ass fits perfectly in those faded jeans.

 

***

 

“He was a fucking asshole.”

Charlie rolls her eyes and slurps up a noodle from her take-out box. “Like you’re one to talk! You’re the most asshole-y, asshole to ever asshole ninety-five percent of the time.”

He points a chopstick at her menacingly and tries to repress his smile, “Hey! First of all I take offense to that. Second of all, for the love of god, stop saying asshole. I’m trying to eat.”

Charlie’s grin practically takes up her entire face, “yeah, Winchester, I’m sure the words asshole and eating in the same sentence just really grosses you out.”

Dean feels his face heat up and he can’t say much of anything because he practically set himself up for that one. He just shovels another bite of orange chicken in his mouth and clicks play on the remote.

 

***

 

Dean only thinks about blue-eyed-dickbag a couple times that week. He only thinks of him once the following and after the third week? Not at all.

In fact, when he leaves Charlie’s shop a month later he has forgotten the guy even exists.

That’s when they start showing up.

He notices it tucked beneath the windshield wiper on his Impala. It’s a small, blue flier with a cartoon bee sitting on a pink flower with “Save the Bees” in a puffy font that resembles clouds. Dean stares at it for about about three solid minutes before crumpling it up and shoving it in his pocket.

 

***

 

The next day when he leaves the deli on his lunch break there is another flier on his windshield. He disposes of it the same way he did the other and yanks open his car door, huffing extra loud.

 

***

 

After almost two solid weeks of ripping, crumpling and burning “Save the Bee” fliers- Dean’s had enough.

“You look like a certified creep.”

“Shut up, Charlie. I’ll catch the asshole doing this if it’s the last thing I do,” he grunts as he shifts his weight to better angle his view out the window. Her eye roll is practically audible from behind him and he elects to ignore the way she irritably huffs.  

“Well, I’m heading out soon and I’m not going to let you brood in my window sill all day. It’s bad for business,” she says, giving him a hard flick on the back of the head. “Not to mention, you don’t even know if the dude is in town. You could be waiting for nothing. Don’t you have better things to do? People to annoy? Bugs to kill? The family business?”

Dean is about five seconds away from a snippy remark when he sees a hooded figure stop right beside his car. The person, a guy, shoves his aviators back up his nose and glances around nervously. Dean feels his pulse quicken and he blindly gestures to Charlie to look out the window.

“I think that’s him. He looks pretty sketchy, right?”

Charlie leans in close over his shoulder, squinting and saying, “yeah, he looks like the unibomber. If the unibomber was dreamy.”

Dean makes a face at her comment, though he can’t really argue. Even with the ominous hood and sunglasses there is no denying that there is some quality bone structure going on. There’s something familiar about that square jaw and those plush lips.

Dean’s so lost in thought he almost misses the guy pulling a flyer from the inside of his zip-up jacket. He springs up, nearly knocking Charlie over; who whines in protest, scurrying to follow him out the door.

“Don’t cause a scene in front of my shop, Winchester!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, your highness,” he grunts, pushing the door open with all his strength, tumbling out of the shop and practically shoving his finger in handsome-unibomber’s face.

“You!” Dean practically snarls and rips the flyer from the guy’s hand, waving it around in the air. “What the hell is your problem?”

The guy seems to panic, his mouth hanging open and hands flailing to take the flyer back (which Dean pointedly keeps out of his reach).

That’s when it clicks.

“Wait a second,” Dean breathes out. He lowers his hand enough so that the other man can easily snatch the paper back into his possession. Dean takes that moment, when the other’s guard is down, to pull the sunglasses back away from the man’s face.

Yep. Bingo.

Big blue eyes stare back at him. Dean feels his heart seize a little in his chest.

“It’s-”

“Castiel!” Charlie  side-steps him, practically shoving Dean out of the way and throws a death glare over her shoulder. She slings an arm over Castiel’s shoulder and tugs him close, beaming from one man to the other.

“You know him?” Dean and Castiel both say in unison. They both clamp their mouth shut, into a tight, thin line and narrow challenging glares in each other’s direction. Dean opens his mouth first but it’s Charlie who speaks.

“Yeah, Cas here runs the Apiary on the outside of town,” she answers, giving Cas a slap on the back which seems to jolt him out of his catatonic stare.

“The what?” Dean asks, eyes not leaving Cas. He is definitely, one hundred percent not checking him out.

“Bee yard,” Cas states flatly like that’s just a normal fucking job that someone has. Honestly, Dean can’t help the laugh that bubbles out of him. Cas inclines his head to the side, fixing him with pointed look. “What’s so funny?”

Dean groans away the laughter and rubs him hand down his face. He forgot this handsome dick-bag (and his brain has got to stop supplying words like handsome to describe Castiel) has zero sense of humor. Then again, of course a man who farms bees isn’t going to realize how absurd that is.

“Well, Cas, the bee farmer-”

“Apiarist,” Cas cuts in.

“Gesundheit,” Dean snips and Charlie leans forward to smack at his shoulder. “What?” he says defensively, which is just met with her raising her eyebrows and jerking her head towards Cas.

“Don’t be an ass, Dean. Cas is a nice guy,” she says cooly, beaming up at Cas like he’s some sort of weird bee god. Cas breaks his stoic frown for the first time and smiles back at her, warm and gentle and there is a nagging voice in the back of Dean’s head wishing that Cas would smile at him like that.

He’s had enough.

“Whatever,” he grumbles and jabs a finger in Cas’ direction, “stop leaving those flyers on my car.”

He turns away and stalks off before he has a chance to hear Cas’ reply or see Charlie’s mischievous grin and ‘I’m-up-to-know-good’ look.

 

***

 

The flyers stop showing up on his car and Dean would be relieved if they weren’t plastered in every shop window in town. Including, Charlie’s.

Dean has officially been betrayed.

 

***

 

No, now Dean has officially been betrayed. Because the flyers in the window wasn’t enough. No, no way. There was now a real life Castiel Novak sitting on Charlie’s love seat on movie night. If that wasn’t the worst of it, the fact that Cas was in soft flannel pajamas and a gray tee-shirt definitely was.

Cas didn’t even acknowledge his presence, just stared straight at the TV, twiddling his thumbs like a child. Not that Dean had any room to talk. He was still standing by the door, holding bag of snacks and openly gaping at the grumpy ball of adorableness sitting on the couch.

“Hey, Dean!” Cas and Dean both jumped at Charlie’s voice as she entered the room with two bowls of popcorn and a knowing smile. “Hope you don’t mind. I invited Cas to movie night.”

“I see that,” Dean said slowly, eyes still trained on Cas and the way his hands fidgeted in his lap. He finally glanced over in Dean’s direction, but looked away quickly, back at the blank TV.

Dean decided to ignore Cas’ weird behavior, it’s not like he really knew him. He didn’t really have a base of comparison. For all he knew Cas’ acted like a nervous wreck all the time. Still, there was something pulling at his gut telling him something was wrong.

Before he gets a chance to sit on the main couch next to Charlie, she deliberately stretches out, gangly legs taking up all the available space.

“C’mon, Charlie, move it.”

Charlie lets out the biggest, fakest yawn Dean’s ever head and stretches out almost impossibly further. “No, I’ve had a long day. Go sit with Cas.”

Dean stares at the red head and gives a silent plea, that he hopes his conveys well through his facial expressions,  to move the fuck over.

She smiles smugly and shakes her head, pointing to the remote and second bowl of popcorn on the coffee table. “While your up turn the movie on and take that over to Cas.” Dean just scowls at her so she adds a sickeningly sweet, “Please”.

“Sure thing, princess.”

“Queen,” she corrects and adjusts the bowl of popcorn she has balancing on her stomach.

Dean snatches up the remote and bowl and heads over to the loveseat where Cas is currently looking everywhere but Dean or Charlie. Weird-o.

He plops down and settles the popcorn between him and does his best to scoot himself as far away from Cas as possible.

“Hello, Dean,” Cas almost whispers. Dean whips his head to the side to see Cas nearly staring a hole into him. It’s be creepy if Dean wasn’t so captivated by Cas’ perfect, chiseled from marble features.

“Hey,” Dean hears himself say and he doesn’t even notice how weird it is that they just now acknowledged each other.

He isn’t sure how long they sit like that, eyes locked in an intense stare down, but Charlie coughs and it snaps Dean out of his trance.

“I hate to interrupt, but I’m trying to get my Jurassic Park on,” Charlie says from the other couch, shoving a handful of popcorn in her mouth and successfully getting more on her than in her mouth.

“Right,” Dean scoffs, voice a little lower than necessary, and fumbles with the remote to turn on the TV and press play.

 

***

 

The movie plays on and within the first twenty minutes, Charlie had passed out and is lightly snoring on the couch, covered in popcorn and plush blankets.

“This part always gives me an adrenaline rush,” Cas whispers. Dean looks over and Cas’ focus is lasered in on the movie. He turns to the TV to see Raptors sniffing and clicking around the kitchen. “No matter how many times I watch it, it still gets my heart beating.”

Dean gulps and tries to focus on the movie. His heart is beating but for an entirely different reason. Earlier, when Dr. Malcolm was describing the chaos theory, his and Cas’ hands brushed when reaching for popcorn and his heart had been jackhammering ever since.

Dean loved Jurassic Park, it was a classic, but he couldn’t focus at all on it. Not when his head was filled with what it would be like to actually hold Cas’ hand or maybe run his knuckles over that stubble on his jaw.

“Yeah,” Dean whispers lamely, “me too.”

Dean looks over just in time to see Cas smile.

 

***

 

Dean wakes up because there is a warm presence pressed against his side. When he opens his eyes, it’s dark, but he can make out the empty couch across from him and the popcorn bowls stacked on to the table.

The weight against his shifts and Dean’s brain finally puts into place that it’s Cas. He looks down at the head rested on his shoulder and feels his heart seize up. Instinctively, Dean pushes away the dark hair from Cas’ forehead and Cas leans into the soft touch.

Dean can’t help when his hand moves from carding though the soft strands of hair to cradle Cas’ sleeping face, thumb stroking the stubble and tracing the hard lines of his face.

Cas’ eyes blink open and Dean stops, frozen. What the fuck was he doing? What the fuck was he thinking?

“Dean?” Cas croaks out, pushing up a little so that they are eye-level. Shit, Cas’ voice is even lower when it’s gravelly with sleep.

Dean opens his mouth to say something, anything, but his words are lost when he feels Cas’ lips against his. It’s warm, sweet and tastes vaguely of the popcorn they had shared earlier. Dean tries to keep up but the sooner he is leaning into the kiss, the sooner Cas is pulling back.

Cas keeps his face close, eyes flicking from Dean’s lips to his eyes. Even in the dark they are blue, Dean thinks.

“Was that okay?”

Dean can’t do anything but nod because hell yes, that was okay.

“Good,” Cas says, setting back against Dean’s side, nuzzling his head into his arm. “I’d like to do that again, but in the morning.”

Dean nods, but it’s too late. Cas is already asleep.

 

***

 

Charlie wakes up earlier than the wants, but there is a crick in her neck from sleeping on the couch and she needs to make sure that Tweedledee and Tweedledum didn’t murder each other while she was out. Just because she saw through the banter didn’t mean they would so quickly.

Charlie didn’t fancy herself a matchmaker. She wasn’t into the whole love deal, not that that meant she didn’t appreciate a fine lady now and again. There had been Gilda, Dorothy and that one time with Rowena- but Charlie didn’t do love. Just wasn’t her scene.

However, that didn’t mean that she didn’t know puppy love when she saw it. Dean and Cas? Puppy love to the max. The thing was, Cas was weird and Dean didn’t do feelings so she had, unfortunately figured out that the idiots were perfect for each other before they did. It only took two meetings and Charlie knew what was going to happen.

In all fairness, it was kinda’ sick.

When she rounded the corner of the hallway to the living room, coffee in hand, she was pleasantly surprised by what she saw. Cas was practically on top of Dean, steady drool making a damp spot on Dean’s shirt and Dean was clinging for dear life.

“Gross,” she muttered around the lip of her coffee cup.

Charlie Bradbury was a genius.

  
  


 

  
  
  
  



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